If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. That's what all the cool kids do. Thanks for visiting!
I mean, that’s what I hear. Balance. Moderation. All that shit, right?
I have to say that I always struggle to find that fucking balance…in nearly every aspect of my life.
I am thrilled beyond words at this new job of mine. I can’t even begin to tell you what a boost that is to my self esteem. And it’s the perfect job for me, too. Telecommuting is my friend.
I don’t do corporate very well. The office buildings, the elevators, the floors that all look exactly the same and the only way you can tell that you’re on the RIGHT floor is by the scarce bit of personalized cubicle wall fluff.
Yeah, that shit just doesn’t work well with Karl. I’ve done it. Did it for a long time. Technical writing was my thing for a while there. The excitement of policy and procedures manuals…oh, how I loved to craft them. *cough* You want to know what drains the creative spirit faster than anything? Other than Yanni, I mean? It’s working for The Man. Not just any man…THE Man. That cookie cutter corporate sonofabitch that cares about nothing but the bottom line from quarter to quarter. Ugh.
I’ve never adapted well to that mentality, which is a problem. I used to work for a big real estate financing corporation and, while I worked with cool people in my department, it was more and more difficult for me to wrap my brain around who I was working for. I mean, the concept of real estate, when you get existential (which I often tend to do) is BIZARRE.
How the fuck on Earth is it that we somehow feel we can own land? I mean, really, think about it. How did you get your land? Not the house…the land the house sits on. You bought it from someone, who bought it from someone, and so on and so forth ad nauseum. UNTIL you work your way back to the FIRST person that “owned” the land. Yeah, how did that happen?
It’s just…weird to me. The concept of us owning property, which is somehow arbitrarily assigned invisible boundary lines. Completely alien when I get that high up on the thinking plane.
Seriously, in a thousand years, do you think anyone is going to give a shit about the property you reside on? In TEN thousand years? In the grand scheme of the universe, what the fuck are we all doing? Working our asses off in these cookie-cutter buildings, most of us working for someone other than ourselves, all getting paid some arbitrary amount of money so that we can pay the bills. Pay for the car. Pay for the house. Pay the rent. Pay our property taxes.
All for shit that means NOTHING in 10,000 or 100,000 years. If that doesn’t blow your mind, I don’t know what will.
It’s THIS kind of thinking exactly that brought me to my knees working on technical manuals for a real estate financing company. An industry I felt was/is ludicrous in The Universe. And if I can’t believe in what I’m DOING? Bah, I might as well just chuck it all in to the middle of the ring and say “fuck this.” And that’s precisely what I did.
Yeah, Karl? Not so much a joiner. I’ll join the choir. I’ll join the blood drive. I’ll join the MST3K Fan Club. As long as I can buy into it.
All of that longwinded shit is my way of saying I’m far better off outside the office. Most offices, anyway. I’ve seen some great news stories on TV and in magazines that profile companies like Zappos.com and I could really see working there. They don’t believe in the hive mentality as much as they do the individual. And I dig that. Treating people like people…go figure, it’s a good thing.
So yeah, the balance. I haven’t forgotten where I began this ramble fest. Bear with me. I’m exhausted. I had less than 3 hours of sleep last night and my head has been (primarily) filled with vapid stories about K-Fed and babies wearing designer diapers. It’s fun, it’s exhilerating to be working again, but it’s also taxing in a way I haven’t felt in quite a while because - yeah, it’s been a while since I’ve worked.
Balance. I haven’t found it yet. I know that I haven’t had time to read blogs in the last week or two, and BAM! Today is already come and gone and I haven’t touched my feedreader in days. But I’ll get there. As I learn the ropes at Famecrawler, I’ll get there.
And I’ll occasionally get up and step away from the laptop so I can watch Big Brother or cheesy B horror flicks on SciFi, all in an effort to stop thinking about what celebrities are fucking pregnant. Don’t get me wrong, it’s fun making fun of celebs. But too much of ANYTHING - well, we come back to balance.
You can get burned out on anything, I know from experience. Even sex. Been there, and that’s one thing you really don’t want to get burned out on.
I spent a few hours yesterday away from my laptop, only to visit a friend to help her with HER computer troubles. She needs me to build her a web site, and I’m happy to help where I can. But there’s only so much I can do.
Ugh, rambling again. I’m tired. I guess I started all this bullshit to talk about the balance in life and how I struggle to find it and I got really stressed out on Friday and fell off the smoking horse. I hate to admit it, but I did. I fell. And I was too angry and ashamed at myself to call Britt and tell her or to admit it here before now. Stupid, but hey, it’s true. You guys have all been very supportive and that helped me a lot, so I didn’t want to let you down.
It started with just one…and I SHOULD have called Britt for the support that we both signed up for, but I didn’t. And I caved.
I’m gonna quit again. I made it for nearly five days. I’m not about to say “fuck it” and just keep on puffing away. But right now, I’m smoking. I need to set a new quit date and go for it again until it sticks.
There, I said it. I’m a bad boy. I suck. But I’ll move on from this and get back on the horse. Soon.
In the meantime, I need some rest. After I finish gossiping.
Filed under Famecrawler, Local Goings On, Rants, Uncategorized, quitting smoking | Comments (27)
I’ve been watching the Olympics the last few days and enjoy them more and more each time I watch. Weird, because as a kid and even a young adult I found them terribly boring. In fact, so much so that I cursed network television for preempting my favorite shows…even if they were reruns.
I just finished watching the American male swim team win the relay race after the French team claimed they would smash us. I love that shit. I hate arrogance so to see America come back in the last 10% of that race and pull ahead (even if it was only 8/100ths of a second) is awesome.
The one thing that bugs me about the Olympics is that professionals are now allowed to play in them. There was a time when the Olympics were all amateurs. You couldn’t play even if you accepted an endorsement deal. But now? Pros are all over the place…basketball, tennis, volleyball. Ugh. What’s the freaking point of that?
I also take issue with people that say President Bush should have boycotted the Olympics. That’s rather short-sighted bullshit. The Olympics are all about FORGETTING the politics, even for only two weeks. It’s about nations coming together, competing in the name of sportsmanship and national pride. If Bush had stayed home it would have been a slap in the face - not only China’s face but our Olympians, as well.
Yeah, China sucks in the arena of human rights. But you can’t knock them for their athletes, who truly rock. The opening ceremony of the Olympics was absolutely amazing. The precision, the gala, the costumes…over 15,000 individual performers coming together and kicking ass.
The fucking athletes don’t give a shit about the politics. They’ve worked their asses off for YEARS for these moments. Boycotting the Olympics is not only unAmerican, but inhuman.
Now, in two weeks when all this fanfare is over? Yeah, let’s get back on the train to make things better in China. But for now? Shut the fuck up and watch. Or don’t.
Filed under Politics, Rants, Sports, Television | Comments (25)
I’m beat. I didn’t even have the energy to really edit this video post, but here it is.
I have to get up in 6 hours to head to the airport, since Karlifornia is officially coming to a close. I should land in Orlando at 7:25pm Eastern. I predict much sleeping on the plane.
Hilly and Karl Talk Blogging Buddies That Don’t Get Along from Karl Erikson on Vimeo.
